Another "seed image." I was photographing in the Furusato Village near Tono, Japan when I came across this cabinet in the shadows. I immediately thought of Junichiro Tanazaki's classic book on Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows. For the next few hours, I looked for more images like this in the hopes that I could put together a little collection of my own in praise of shadows. Funny, but I found Japanese aesthetics all over this ancestral village in Japan.

Photographically speaking, this set of images is my proof that a monopod with image stabilization is a perfectly useable combination. All of the images in this series I would normally have used a tripod because of the slow shutter speeds needed in these dark locations. I didn't have one, so my monopod was severely tested. Even downs to 1/2 second, the images are sharp. I did, however, have enough experience with the monopod to know that not every exposure would be sharp. The strategy is to simply increase one's odds of success by making several exposures and then selecting the best one for use.